This invention relates to a compact portable/handheld calculator/timepiece that is capable of storing, retrieving, editing, deleting and outputting of description numeric data, as well as arithmetically manipulating the numeric data, pertaining to sales or purchases of goods or services (transactions) of the user.
The present invention is primarily aimed at, but not limited to, users who wish to keep a record of, for example;
monthly consumer purchases (for example food, clothing, entertainment expenses, automotive maintenance costs, personal grooming costs, expenditure costs on gifts etc.);
professional people who bill clients by the hour, or some multiple of time thereof (for example consultants, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics, electricians etc.);
salespeople who sell goods or services at a fixed price per item/service (for example television sales executive selling advertising time, or a street vendor selling foodstuffs or consumer merchandise etc.) and
purchasing agents who buy goods from single/multiple source/s based on cost by volume or per item. (for example a purchasing agent for a retail store, or a restaurateur purchasing supplies, or an antique dealer purchasing items for clients, etc.)
These few examples simply illustrate the versatility of the present invention and it is to be understood that the application of the present invention is not restricted to the said examples.
The present invention provides the means for the user to program the present invention's data entry descriptions (for example food, clothing, entertainment expenses, automotive maintenance costs, personal grooming costs, expenditure costs on gifts etc.) either by means of a remote computer (for example a personal computer) interfaced with the present invention and down loading the said data entry descriptions, or by means of a data entry system integrated into the present invention, for example a keypad. These data entry descriptions form tables in the present inventions memory.
If the present invention is to be programmed from a remote computer, only the data entry descriptions need to be programmed, whereas the functional capabilities (for example the means for facilitating data input, storing, retrieving, editing, deleting, outputting etc.) need not be programmed by the user, by means of the remote computer and downloaded into the present invention's program memory, because these functions are already stored in the present invention's program memory. The advantage of this method is that the user need not devise programs on the remote computer to execute the said functional capabilities, but the user need only be concerned with defining the required data entry descriptions that will be used to track the user's data. Thus the user of the present invention need only have minimal technical expertise to use the present invention.
The present invention stores the transaction description and numeric data physically separately in memory, but both sets of data are logically linked together by programmatic means. The advantage of this data storage technique, is that in a transaction environment, the transaction description data are fixed over a given period of time. However, what does vary over time, is the transaction numeric data (for example incurred costs and generated revenues). Therefore, to store the character data and numeric data physically together in the present invention's memory, would be a waste of memory by repeatedly storing redundant character data together with any newly inputted numeric data.
The present invention also enables the user to keep track of their transactions by billing time based on an hourly rate, or some multiple of time thereof. The present invention enables the user to keep track of billing for multiple clients, each of whom may have a different billing rate that is user definable; to temporally suspend the billing clock for non-billable interruptions and after the interruption to continue the billing clock; to track non-hourly billing costs (for example telephone calls made on the clients behalf, or goods purchased to fulfill a client task, etc.).
The accumulated transaction data has the means of being transferred to a remote computer via an electrical/optical interface integrated into the present invention.
The present invention enables the user to set a budget limit for a given transaction description. For every transaction of the given transaction description, the current invention automatically sums the related expenditure and notifies the use if the budget has been exceeded.